Advice on getting routien with bf please :)

[melzie]

I have a 7 week old baby and bf has gone very well. I would now like to get him in more of a routien. What are the guidelines for how many feeds a day? How long between feeds and will he always need the feeds in the night? Im demand feeding at the mo!

Carry on feeding on demand, you're still establishing your supply and if its going well why change? 7 wks is v young to have any sort of feeding routine imo.
He won't always need feeding in the night but will do for considerably longer i imagine.
My experience is DD stopped feeding at night at 6 months DS was 11 months ( still has the occasional feed though!)

IMO (and I have bf 3 children) it is best to continue to feed on demand and let your baby find his or her own routine. Some babies will go much longer between feeds than others. Sometimes babies need to feed very often to stimulate the milk supply. I personally think bf is easier if you take a laid-back approach to routine and go with what your baby wants. All mine has established some sort of routine around 4 months, but they have all needed feeding in the night way past 6 months. I think it really depends on the baby. This is what worked for me.

At 7 weeks the best thing you can do is feed on demand - eventually the time between feeds will lessen and you'll be able to see his own feeding pattern emerge. Just go with the flow; he'll let you know what he needs and when he needs it.

He'll need night feeds for a little while yet.

Not necessarily. I asked my MW and doctor at my 6/7 week check up whether it was necessary to keep waking up DD to breast feed her at night. They said no, if she wasn't waking then leave it. By then her pattern was ever so slightly developing. 6:30am, sometime between 9 and 11, somewhere between 11 and 1, somewhere between... The somewhere betweens got more fixed, but never became an absolute - just as well because now (2 years) her meals are never absolute either. I think it helps to see it as a flexible routine.

I think you can shape things a little i.e waking your baby up at night when you go to bed (helps to be the same time every night) and getting them up at the same time every morning. But other than that it's probably best to feed on demand.

Trouble with asking how many feeds is that BF is food and drink. When a baby feeds on demand they can determine how much they take from each breast - so they can choose to just have the watery foremilk, or stay on and get the hind milk. If you only fed by a routine your baby wouldn't have this fine-tuning. Just my opinion, but saves on the worry of whether baby is getting enough.

Won't be long before you work out what is right for you... but you'll be night-feeding for some time to come unless you're a right jammy sod!! Can you feed him in your bed?

I certainly wouldn't advise waking your baby if he/she is sleeping! But as others have said, continue feeding on demand and don't think about routines.

I have an 8 week old and i'm doing just that! You may find you are being asked by others if you're into a routine yet, i'd just reply yes we're doing fine thanks with a sickly sweet smile, and then go home and continue demand feeding .

DD1 is four and i demand fed her which totally suits me. i always said my child has to fit into our life, rather than the other way round. And still at 4 years she enjoys a relaxed approach to life! i had friends whose children needed to be at home in darkened bedrooms for their naptimes etc and it just seemed to dictate their lives so much, something i was not prepare to happen to me.

DD would either nap wherever we were or wait until she was in the pram/car making her way home and then be easily transferred to cot without waking. These are the sort of benefits that come from NOT making routines in the early days.

I co-slept with dd1 and she fed during the night until she was 2. i don't envisage dd2 being the same because i will ensure she goes back in her cot after night feeds so that dd1 doesn't feel left out, but if it does happen i won't fret as there does come a time when they won't want to feed anymore! And all of a sudden those lovely nighttime snuggles seem a million years ago and yes you actually miss them .

just to give a different point of view, I've followed a routine with my DS since birth nearly, he is now 14 weeks and very well fed and happy...

at 7 weeks I was feeding him at 7,am, 10 am, bit more at 11.30, again at 2pm, 5pm, 6.30 pm, waking him to feed at 10.30 pm then waiting in the night till he woke hungry, usually about 3-4 am. I made sure he had really had enough and wasn't too sleepy to feed properly, and he was really really happy on this routine, so that i knew when he was and wasn't hungry so knew to look for other reasons why he might cry (usually tiredness). He literally only cries about 20 mins total per day, and I really think it's because of having a set routine with larger feeds. Of course it's important to keep your supply going, but I found it fine as your breasts get such a workout during growth spurts.

Of course, if he seemed hungry I would feed at whatever time, but I genuinely think at least for my DS he was happier having a good 'stuff' every 3 hours.. the trouble with feeding on demand is that sometimes food is not what the baby wants,

best of luck!

your baby still has at least a couple more growth spurts to go through so he is still building your supply so trying to establish a routine at the moment isn't a good idea.

to know whether he is tired or hungry, you can try touching one cheek lightly and then the other, if he turns his mouth towards the touch then he is hungry and feed him. if he doesn't then he is tired and try a calming method to help him fall asleep.

also i recommend lots of skin to skin and stripped down to nappy feeding in the daytime to encourage him to feed more during the day and maybe less at night.

night feeds are still important at this age so if he is hungry at night, feed him.